Just Trying to Help

From today's Boston Globe:

The newly released documents also include correspondence between [BRA Deputy Director] Ali-Salaam and Islamic Society officials, in which the BRA official counsels the society on how to negotiate with his agency to get the best deal in their effort to build a mosque, Islamic cultural center, and school on a 45,000-square-foot parcel in Roxbury Crossing.

In one memorandum, marked "confidential" dated Sept. 22, 1989, Ali-Salaam tells Islamic Society trustees that the BRA sold a Roxbury parcel to the US Postal Service several years earlier for $16 per square foot, but he advised the trustees that a Bank of Kuwait appraisal of the potential society land put the value at $6.50 per square foot. He advised the society that the lower figure could be used when negotiating a purchase and said the purchase price could be reduced further by adding community benefits to the project...

The BRA provided a list of religious organizations that have received land under the renewal program since 1962, but declined yesterday to provide details including the size of the parcels sold or the total prices paid by the religious organizations. [BRA spokesperson] Elsbree also declined to say whether BRA officials who were members of the churches advocated on the organizations' behalf in the deals.